(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN…) THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK II

Usually, Taylor was the one being targeted, whether the attack came directly at her or through somebody else. Even when someone else got hurt, there had usually been a reason for it, and that reason almost always came back to her.

She had known, of course, that the people she cared about could be used against her. The possibility had existed somewhere among the countless things she had learned to worry about, but it had rarely seemed important enough to occupy her thoughts. Taylor had spent too many loops dealing with immediate threats to imagine an enemy deciding that hurting her wasn’t enough and deliberately choosing someone she loved instead.

That had changed in less than a second.

For a while, Taylor remained where she was standing, staring at the place where her dad had been walking beside her. Blood covered her face and hair, and pieces of bone had struck her clothes, yet none of that seemed particularly important compared to the fact that he was lying on the pavement several feet away.

People were screaming around her. Some were running, while others had dropped to the ground or were desperately trying to find somewhere to hide, and the sudden movement of the crowd should have drawn Taylor’s attention. Instead, she remained fixed on her dad, unable to reconcile what she had just seen with the fact that only moments earlier he had been walking beside her and asking whether she still wanted something to eat.

Her mind kept trying to find another explanation, but there wasn’t one.

Taylor had watched people die before. She had watched them die in front of her, watched them die because of her, and she had died herself more times than she could remember without making an effort to count them. She had learned how to keep moving when someone died in front of her because there was usually something else that needed to be done. There was always another threat, another person to save, another decision that had to be made before she could afford to think about what she had just lost.

This time, even with the pandemonium around her, she couldn’t bring herself to move.

Someone had killed her dad.

The realization finally broke through the numbness, and her body moved before she had consciously decided what she was doing. Taylor stepped into the street just as a horn blared somewhere to her left, and she turned toward the sound in time to see a car bearing down on her.

The impact threw her across the road, and pain tore through her body as she struck the pavement. She rolled several times before coming to a stop, although by then there was little left for her to feel. The familiar darkness began to close around her.

Taylor let it take her.

When she opened her eyes again, her dad was walking beside her.

For several seconds, she couldn’t move.

He noticed almost immediately and slowed down, turning toward her with the same concerned expression he’d worn countless times before.

“What’s wrong?”

Taylor stared at him.

His blood wasn’t painting the vicinity, his head was still attached to his body, and the afternoon sunlight fell across his face as though the last few minutes had never happened. He was simply there, alive and whole.

For one brief moment, she wanted to grab him and pull him away from the street. Instead, she swallowed and forced herself to breathe.

The first attempt had given her very little to work with. She knew they were being watched, she knew someone had a rifle, or at least some kind of projectile weapon, and she knew her dad was the target, but she had no idea where the shooter had been positioned or how they had chosen the moment to fire.

She needed more information.

Telling her dad exactly what was coming might save him, but it could just as easily change the attack before she learned anything useful. There wasn’t enough time to explain what she knew, either, and Taylor had no intention of wasting this opportunity on something that might not work.

She looked at him again.

“Sniper.”

Her dad’s expression changed as he tried to understand what she meant, but Taylor didn’t explain. If the shooter was watching them, then the warning might be enough to reveal whether they were watching her as well.

The shot came almost immediately, and his head exploded.

She recoiled as blood struck her face, but she wasn’t given the chance to look around as something struck her from the side. The force threw her off balance, and the world spun as the pavement rushed up to meet her. She landed hard, pain spreading through her body.

Taylor understood what had happened before her vision went dark.

The sniper had seen her reaction.

That was the only explanation she could find. Somehow, the killer had noticed that she knew what was coming, and the moment she reacted, they had changed their objective.

Taylor tried to hold on to the thought as everything went dark.

She would have to figure out how they had known.

Then she died.